aht

These are both good questions. I will be contacting EC Designs again today, and will report back my findings.

I recently purchased the UPL16, to use with my own DACs. Please be aware that I could not get it to sync with my Naim V1 or Mirus Pro. With Naim nDAC, it stops playing after every 90 seconds, evidently due to a RAM buffer overload. On the other hand, it works fine with my Naim Muso Qb. I have been in touch with John at EC, and he has been very helpful with technical explanations. However, the bottom line is that they primarily test the UPL16 with their own DACs, and don't guarantee it to work with other brands. Bummer.

The Apple store is offering the MacBook Air USB optical drive as an add-on ($79) for the Mini Server, so presumably you could use that to rip CDs.